Hello Newsletter Readers, and Happy New Year. My annual Top Ten Human Rights Events as they affected NJ residents in Japan in 2017 comes out tomorrow in the Japan Times, so please have a look. But before that, here is the latest Newsletter:

Table of Contents:
//////////////////////////////////////

MORE NJ REFUSALS:

1) XY: My experience with a Harajuku shop keeper – “F*ckin Foreigner kill” racist signs and threatened violence 2) Bitcoin purchasing and racial profiling by Quoinex and BITPoint Japan: Hurdles for NJ customers only 3) Debito quoted in South China Morning Post article: “Why is racism so big in Japan?” 4) Working on 2017’s Top 10 Human Rights Events that affected NJ residents of Japan. What do you think should be included?

TANGENTS: 9) Racism in US World Series against baseball pitcher Yu Darvish: Immediately punished, and turned into learning opportunity 10) October 2017 Lower House Election Briefing: LDP wins big again, routs Japan’s left wing, but some silver linings to be had

… and finally…

11) Japan Times JBC 109: “‘Attach the evidence and wait for your day in court,’ says Turkish plaintiff after Osaka victory”

XY: Hi Debito, I’m a long-term resident of Japan and I’m writing to you to share and get you to share my encounter yesterday with a racist shopkeeper in Takeshita dori in Harajuku. It started with racist signs [photos included] and ended with him threatening me with violence.
Excerpt:
===========================…At that point I decided that there was no way I was going to spend any money in his shop, and anything I bought there would just feel bad so I told him that I no longer wanted the bag. He cursed me out for being cheap and wasting his time (although in fact I was going to buy the bag and already had my money out).

Later after I had finished my other business I decided to get photos of the signs so I could publicize his nastiness, so I went back to the shop and took photos. He yelled at me to stop taking photos and I told him I was only taking photos of the signs and not of his merchandise.

Then he grabbed something and went to hit me with it.

I screamed in shock and ran out of the shop. Totally shaken by this experience I decided to walk down to the large police station around the corner. I wanted to make a report because I felt it needed to be on record. The police refused to take a report and told me I should call 110 next time…

2) Bitcoin purchasing and racial profiling by Quoinex and BITPoint Japan: Hurdles for NJ customers only

Shiki: Recently I’ve been signing up for Bitcoin and other crypto exchanges in Japan. Most vendors have presented no problem, they follow the law in which they have the obligation to ask for an official ID, just like PayPal does in Japan, for which I have been sending the front of my Personal Number Card (My Number Card), and then they send you a post card to your address to confirm you actually live there. That’s what these exchanges and basically any virtual money company in Japan is required to do by law.

Except for 2 exchanges, Quoinex and BITPoint. I registered with the major Japanese exchanges like bitFlyer and Coincheck among other minor exchanges. With all of them I used my Personal Number Card, and no one told me I had to do something different because of my face. But like these 2 exchanges, more and more companies who like racial profiling are starting to ask for the Residence Card for extra-legal purposes, basically discriminating in the way people are able to open accounts or register to services based on their nationality unless you comply with some extra requirements.

One of the worst examples of this is AU, which is starting to reject foreigners for buying phones in multiple payments, if the expiration of their current status in Japan does not exceed the payment timeframe for their phones, which is usually 2 years. This basically means that if your current stay permit is of 1 year, or your stay is about to expire in less than 2 years, you won’t be able to get a phone at the same price as Japanese people. Let’s remember that the maximum stay period in Japan for most visas is of 5 years, and that you cannot renew your stay until 3 months prior to the expiration date of your current permit, which I would make the case that it excludes most foreigners under a non-permanent residency status.

Just like the My Number law states very clearly that it is illegal for someone who isn’t required by law to ask for your “My Number”, or taking copies of the part of your card which shows the actual number, I think we require a law to stop people who for asking for someone’s Residence Card if they aren’t legally required to do so. In some respects I would argue that the information inside the Residence Card is in many respects just as sensitive as your “My Number”, and asking for it is an invasion of privacy at best.

3) Debito quoted in South China Morning Post article: “Why is racism so big in Japan?”

SCMP: The hand-written sign in the entrance of a cosmetics shop in Japan might have been shocking to many Chinese, but to some observers its message was all too familiar. The sign, which said Chinese people were not allowed to enter, caused outrage when images of it were posted on Chinese websites last month.

Within 24 hours, the store’s owner Pola Inc ordered the sign to be removed and vowed to suspend operations at the outlet. Pola acknowledged the notice had caused “unpleasant feelings and inconvenience to many people” and said it would deal with the situation “gravely”. In contrast with the anger in China, the incident attracted little coverage in Japan and received only brief mention in the few media outlets that covered it at all.

That seeming lack of interest doesn’t surprise Debito Arudou, a human-rights activist who was born David Schofill in California and became a naturalised Japanese citizen in 2000. Discrimination is a sad fact of life in Japan, according to Arudou, and if anything, it is becoming more frequent – and more blatant…

4) Working on 2017’s Top 10 Human Rights Events that affected NJ residents of Japan. What do you think should be included?

I’m working on my annual Top 10 Human Rights Events of 2017 that affected NJ residents of Japan. (Here’s the list for 2016.) Do Debito.org Readers have any suggestions about what should make the list?

Remember a) these must be events, not just ongoing issues (although they could be events that punctuate or illustrate the larger issue), b) these events must have occurred in 2017, and c) they must have a distinct effect on NJ residents in Japan.

Based upon that, what do you think mattered last year? Please let us know in the Comments Section below.

Mainichi: To mark the one year anniversary of the anti-hate speech law coming into effect on June 3, the Mainichi Shimbun interviewed a 38-year-old man who formerly participated actively in anti-Korean and anti-foreigner hate speech demonstrations to the extent of becoming a leading member. He spoke about his experience and the actions that he now deeply regrets. […] When asked about what fueled his extreme behavior, he offered the authorization of the use of roads for demonstrations and the many dispatched police officers that surrounded the events. “Because we had received permission to use the road, I felt like anything I said was protected by the shield of ‘freedom of speech,’” he remembered. “Even if opposition groups surrounded our demonstrations, I felt safe because I knew the police officers would protect us. It felt like we had the upper hand.”

COMMENT: The Mainichi gives us an interesting case study of how one Wajin became a participant in hate speech groups, how he felt empowered due to the fact there was (at the time) no enforceable hate speech law in Japan, and how he eventually became disillusioned with the movement. While completely anecdotal and single-case, if we get enough of these, patterns emerge, and aggregated case studies eventually can become meaningful surveys (as the fieldwork resulting from the Otaru Onsens Case demonstrated, as it morphed into the Rogues’ Gallery of Exclusionary Establishments and a doctoral dissertation study). Let us begin the first step of understanding how and why people hate, and hopefully more people will realize why societies should make hate speech legally culpable.

6) Flawed academic article on Otaru Onsens Case et al.: “Discrimination Against Foreigners in Japan”, in Journal of Law and Policy Transformation

The Otaru Onsens Case, one of the most prominent lawsuits against racial discrimination in Japan’s history, continues to live on both in law and social-science academic journals. The most recent, “Discrimination Against Foreigners in Japan”, came out last July in the “Journal of Law and Policy Transformation”. It cites a lot of online sources (but not the definitive book on the case, “Japanese Only: The Otaru Hot Springs Case and Racial Discrimination in Japan”).

However, if this paper was from a student in my Research Methods class, I would dock points for a number of things here, not least the lack of peer-reviewed sources cited. It’s essentially taking all the work from Debito.org and rehashing it as a show-and-tell for academic credit, moreover without reading the most recent books and analyses on cases since then; plus it has a number of typos and a rather glib final conclusion that: “[A]s it correctly noted [sic] by Yoshio Sugimoto[,] ‘contemporary Japanese society is caught between the contradictory forces of narrow ethnocentrism and open internalization [sic]’. This proves the fact [sic] that passing laws at all levels of government outlawing discrimination in Japan is just a matter of time.” As written, I don’t logically follow.

(I have the feeling even the article title was readjusted by the gatekeepers to revert the issue back to “foreigner discrimination”, making it once again an issue of nationality, and glossing over the fact that one of the excluded plaintiffs in the Otaru Onsens Case was in fact NOT foreign. Moreover, reading the Abstract below, I note how even the summary must include a disclaimer that the “foreigners” are partially to blame for their being discriminated against “due to differences in language, religion, custom and appearance as well”.)

Anyway, congrats I guess on keeping the issue and the information in circulation, and for getting this into the research canon past the academic gatekeepers who would rather not see discrimination in Japan as racial in nature.

7) Reuters: “Who is Kazuo Ishiguro?” Japan asks, but celebrates Nobel author as its own. Very symptomatic of Japan’s ethnostate.

Last October, Briton Kazuo Ishiguro, who writes exclusively in English, won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Predictably, Japan’s media boasted that a third Japanese writer (with the caveat that he was Japan-born) had won a Nobel. Well, not really. Imagine, say, Germany claiming as their own all the Nobel-laureate scientists of the Deutsch diaspora living abroad, even those without actual German citizenship, for however many generations?

In Japan, this highly-questionable social science is hardly problematized. As noted below by Reuters, a similar claim was laid to Shuji “Slave” Nakamura, inventor of the LED, who due to his foul treatment by Japan’s scientific and academic communities quite actively disavows his connections to Japan (in fact, he urges them to escape for their own good). Same with Yoichiro Nambu, who got Nobelled as a team in 2008 for Physics, who had been living in the US since the 1960s, was a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, and had even relinquished Japanese citizenship and taken American.

I suspect this is for massaging a rather insecure national pride. Also because it is largely unquestioned under the concept of Japan as an ethnostate, where nationality is directly linked to blood ties. That is to say, anyone who is of Japanese blood can be claimed as a member of the Japanese societal power structure (i.e., a Wajin). And the converse is indeed true: Even people who take Japanese citizenship who lack the requisite Wajin blood are treated as foreign: Just ask Japan’s “naturalized-but-still-foreign” athletes in, say, the sumo wrestling or rugby communities.

It’s a pretty racist state of affairs. One I discuss in depth in acclaimed book “Embedded Racism”(Lexington Books, 2015). And, as I argue in its closing chapter, one that will ultimately lead to the downfall of a senescent Japan.

TANGENTS: 9) Racism in US World Series against baseball pitcher Yu Darvish: Immediately punished, and turned into learning opportunity

BleacherReport: Houston Astros first baseman Yuli Gurriel has reportedly been suspended for the first five games of next season after making a racist gesture aimed at Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Yu Darvish in Game 3 of the World Series… Gurriel homered off Darvish in the second inning of Houston’s 5-3 win on Friday. After returning to the dugout, television cameras showed Gurriel pulling down on the corners of his eyes. He apologized for the incident following the game.

WaPo: …Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred suspended Yuli Gurriel of the Houston Astros without pay for five games at the beginning of next season for making a racially insensitive gesture and yelling an anti-Asian insult at Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Yu Darvish during Game 3 of the World Series on Friday night. It is not expected that the players’ union will contest the discipline.

Gurriel’s immediate expression of remorse after the game, as well as a full apology and a desire to meet Darvish personally to apologize, may have helped the Astros first baseman avoid being suspended during this World Series.

Just as pertinent, Darvish, after saying that Gurriel’s acts were “disrespectful” to Asians around the world, wrote in a tweet that, “I believe we should put our effort into learning rather than to accuse him. . . . Let’s stay positive and move forward instead of focusing on anger. I’m counting on everyone’s big love.”

COMMENT: I rather like the attitudes taken by officialdom (immediate response to tamp down on racist expressions) and by the target (anger but optimism that this will be a lesson learned). I’m just a bit worried that the typical reaction in the Japanese press will be, “Well, discrimination happened to one of ours! Disgraceful! You see? Our racism towards others is just what everyone does worldwide. So there’s little need to address it here.” I doubt it will be seen as a “teaching moment”, beyond saying that racism happens in other countries to us Japanese, not in Japan. That’s the standard narrative reinforced in standardized education in Japan, and that’s why when you see it happen in Japan, it’s less likely to have constructive outcomes like these. Now that is a wasted opportunity. Well done, US MLB and all parties to this incident.

10) October 2017 Lower House Election Briefing: LDP wins big again, routs Japan’s left wing, but some silver linings to be had

As is tradition on Debito.org (see previous writings here, here, here, here, here, here, and here), after a Japanese election we analyze the results:

WINNERS AND LOSERS:
The LDP won big, retaining its absolute 2/3 majority beyond 310 seats in the assembly. But it wasn’t an unqualified win. It retained exactly the same number as last time. However, KMT lost five seats from the 34 it had pre-election.

However, the protest vote by people who wanted a party to keep Japan’s Constitution as it is (the CDP), won bigger, going from 15 seats from its DPJ/DP politicians to a full 55. Message: The DPJ is dead, long live its spirit in the CDP.

The losers were just about everyone else. Koike’s Hope Party dropped from 57 to 50 seats, the far-right Japan Restoration Party (Nihon Ishin no Kai) from 14 to 11, the far-left Communist Party from 21 to 12, and the tiny socialist Social Democratic Party (Shamintou) holding steady at two seats.

The biggest losers were the party-unaffiliated politicians (mushozoku) on both sides. The ones leaning left went from 27 seats to 21, while the ones leaning right went from eleven to one! Part of this is that due to the Proportional Representation vote (which only applies to official parties), these independents had to win in single-seat constituencies. But the bigger reason seems to be that brand recognition these days sells well: Either you stampeded with the herd under the LDP’s umbrella, or you went for a party flavor du jour (which quickly soured under Koike’s Hope, but clearly flowered under the CDP).

11) Japan Times JBC 109: “‘Attach the evidence and wait for your day in court,’ says Turkish plaintiff after Osaka victory”

JBC: On Aug. 25, the Osaka District Court handed down a landmark ruling in a discrimination lawsuit.

Ibrahim Yener, a Turkish national and 14-year resident of Japan, was refused service last October by an Osaka used car dealer, which stated in an email (text at www.debito.org/?p=14743) that they would not serve foreign customers. The car company also stipulated that even if the customer legally holds Japanese citizenship, they would only sell to people who could “hold their own (sonshoku ga nai) against native speakers” in terms of Japanese language ability (as determined solely by the car company).

Yener felt this was discriminatory, filed suit and won. The presiding judge said that it “was based on prejudice that a foreigner would cause trouble and does not justify the discriminatory treatment.” But what made this case particularly noteworthy is that Yener navigated Japan’s legal system all by himself — without a lawyer.

Thus this case offers potential lessons for other non-Japanese or international Japanese who face similar discrimination. JBC contacted Yener last week to find out more about the thinking behind bringing the case…

That’s all for the first Debito.org Newsletter of 2018. Thanks for reading, and may there be more human rights advances in the coming year! We’ll keep you posted!
Debito Arudou Ph.D.DEBITO.ORG NEWSLETTER JANUARY 3, 2018 ENDS

===================Do you like what you read on Debito.org? Want to help keep the archive active and support Debito.org’s activities? Please consider donating a little something. More details here. Or even click on an ad below.

That Hamada-“chan”って, not a nice man (see wiki) appropriating and denigrating western culture since the 90s (He single handedly dumbed down the incoming UK DnB Jungle music form into an appropriated Japanese joke, the death knell of genuine UK club industry and work for NJ DJs, but I partially digress). He seems to have an inferiority complex as Downtown’s Matsumoto has called him in the past are “monkey child,” “chimpanzee,”[12] “baby gorilla,” and “lip monster.”[13] wikipedia. So I move he is looking for someone below him to deinigrate, and he thinks that is black people.

An apologist wrote that Hamada was “showing love to Eddie Murphy (by doing blackface? He doesnt look like Murphy in the slightest)” and yet “he is known for being blunt and tactless towards everybody, no matter how famous they may be. He has a notoriously quick temper and is prone to snapping at others, including overzealous fans who bother him on the streets.” wikipedia

Funny that he was dirt poor from Amagasaki (a real dump) and now he’s made it, it’s gone to his head, because I actually had a run in with another product of Yoshimoto Kogyo who was from the total back-end-of-Japanese-beyond, and he was a total piece of garbage as a human being who treated everyone around him with total disrespect, and was filled with self-loathing at being forced to make others laugh for a living.
Must be the company culture?

I wish Debito would cover something like this, everytime there is some foreign cultural trend big in Japan, there is a kind of conspiracy to “steal its thunder” and appropriate and do a local version. I move blackface is one of these lame attempts.
So, the example I give is Julianas Tokyo (British Disco in Shibaura) but then Avex Records and the police kind of brought it down and a bunch of NJs were out of a job. Then Jungle/DnB was the next big musical thing, and Hamada and Komuro (before he did jail time) made a song by H Jungle with T and singelhandedly conned every Japanese into thinking that this was what “jungle” was.

This doesnt happen in other countries, that like foreign things as genuine, legitimate articles. Reggae means Bob Marley, not any local imitators. Its a weird J–appropriation but I think, having read more about Hamada and his blackface, that it comes from an inferiority complex; “We Japanese can do that too”. Discuss.

— Not in other countries? Vanilla Ice? Elvis? We need clearer definitions between “adaptation” and “appropriation”.

Dr. Debito, I would argue that when white American boys grow up in the same kind of inequality and deprivation that black American boys do, that when those white American boys appropriate music of black origin, there is a world of difference compared to when a ‘we are all middle class’ Japanese kid living on an allowance from his parents in a mono-ethnic middle class suburb ‘appropriates’ a facsimile of ‘blackness’ from what his racially driven education system and TV programming shows him.
Not all ‘appropriation’ is equal.

— Of course. Wasn’t saying it was. Just not sure what it is. I’m not sure anyone is. Unless we can define our terms, there’s not much we can discuss effectively.

Its different. Hamada and Komuro made a joke out of a UK cultural movement, and dumbed it down, used it once, then discarded it, so Jungle as a genre essentially failed in Japan. From then on, say the word “Jungle” and all Japanese people would say “Like Hamada and Komuro?” As it was also a form of a black music, one could argue this was an early attempt by Hamada at “blackface”.
Additionally, Elvis probably created jobs- he spawned an industry that had longevity. Hamada and Komuro put all NJs in the Japanese music industry out of a job at the time, as Wembley PLC were forced out. (Komuro bought our Julianas Tokyo and converted it into a J pop, “Komuro factory” vehicle. H Jungle with t was one of those. There was also negative media coverage which all stopped once it became Japanese (what a coincidence) and police collusion, which again stopped once Komuro and pals took over.
The one black man working there-Anthony Lloyd Gulley-‘s career effectively came to an end and he complained at the time “There were opportunities, but the Japanese want to control everything”.
All the gaijin staff had to go work in other Asian outlets. So arguably this also showed how “uniquely” xenophobic Japan was as all the other various Wembley outlets elsewhere in Asia continued on with genuine NJ involvement.Singapore, for instance, were unlike “The Japanese who want to control everything”.
Japan is infamous for appropriating and copying then saying it is Japanese. Baye is again right- get a black actor, the genuine article.
Otherwise Japan is racist at worst and naff, fake copyists at best.

I ll briefly bite about Elvis. Although it could be said he appropriated culture, him and the Stones also raised Chuck Berry and black music’s standing. This is NOT what Hamada and Komuro were doing.They force out the foreigner-they just want the stuff, not Joanie Foreigner herself. I gave you examples of Wembley PLC being forced on the business side, Anthony being fired, and TRF’ (Komuro puppets)’s lame “Survival Dance etc” (歌謡曲/1920s Japanese music) being included on a Techno rave compilation replacing e.g. 2 Unlimited or Prodigy.

Ooops, there goes the authenticity again!
(That’s going to be my new catchphrase of the month in Japan).
J producer also dissed Prodigy and breakbeats “No, it has to be a simple 4/4 beat or Japanese people cant understand”. Dumb down, dumb down in Japan.

“There are few figures more important to the development of rock ’n’ roll than Chuck Berry (who died in March). In the 1950s, white radio stations refused to play his songs, categorizing them as “race music.” Then came Elvis Presley. A white boy playing the same tunes was cool. ”https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/14/opinion/in-defense-of-cultural-appropriation.html
So Japan 90s to now is the same as segregation era USA? Oh, OK then, that’s clear.
Debito, how about Duran Duran’s “Thank You” album and their Public Enemy cover? The fact the album artwork has a picture of Public Enemy clearly shows its a homage.
I dont see many homages to foreigners like that in Japan, just copying and wholesale appropriation, and maybe they even don’t like foreigners, like that shop “Richards” in Harajuku.
Don’t like foreigners? Then stop selling/appropriating our stuff!
This comedy video is Japan’s appropriating attitude:
“As for Indian immigration into the UK, well I like curry, but now we have the recipe, do they really need to stay?” Watch from 0.45https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaGdwfykYGY

Meh, some fluff piece about ‘1 in 8 of new adults in Tokyo foreign born’ self congratulatory back-patting by the Japanese media conspicuously fails to mention the visa/residency status of those NJ born new adults, and suggests they are all temporary students. Be careful of such dishonest reporting.

Sendaiben, this article is a little more helpful.
It is NOT the case that 1 in 8 people in kimono trotting into Coming of Age Ceremonies are NJ born Japanese or NJ, BUT that there are so many NJ ‘trainees’ and workers in KKK jobs that will turn 20 whilst in Japan.
I told you the Japan Today article was dishonest; it makes these NJ sound like they are included in society and it’s rituals, when really they will be serving the drinks in the izakaya for minimum wage before they are EXPECTED TO GO BACK TO THEIR OWN COUNTRY!
Fake news!

You know what, because of the moral panic of meeting Chinese ‘trainees’ or ‘students’ working in all the combines and izakaya in Tokyo (1 in 8, see above!), Japan now feels like it has to ‘get tough’ on refugee applications;

That’s an insanely high number. Can anyone verify whether this statistic is correct or a typo?

— The link says: “Japan’s immigration detention centers held 417,383 people in 2016, the latest year for which data is available. The figure includes those detained more than once during the year, however.” That’s indeed high. But it’s not only asylum seekers. Let’s not overinterpret.

Japanese in Hawaii, totally oblivious to what a warning of an incoming ballistic nuclear missile strike would me in real life, get up on their ‘we Japanese’ racial superiority myths, because ’30 minutes’ is ‘enough time’ so no need to rush, whilst all the Americans are ‘panicking’.
Oh yeah, and a healthy dose of dreamy day ‘I’m not going to think about it, because that would infer responsibility to act’ fatalism.

— I found this smarmy article annoying too. In my neighborhood, there was no visible panic either. I didn’t even know about the alert until after it was called off as a false alarm.

So, apparently there are groups of NJ unemployed delinquents who despite their financial difficulties come to Japan ‘for about a month’ at a time to spray graffiti on trains. Oh, and there are no Japanese delinquents who do this. We know this because some NJ were arrested in connection with one incident about a decade ago.

We know that the J-cops can;
Arrest you for being NJ (whatever the law says). They can even use restraint incorrectly resulting in death with no consequences for them.
Hold you for 23 days without charging you, and deny you access to a lawyer, a phone, even a doctor for that whole time.
They can also interview as many times as they like during that period with no audio/visual recording.
And at the end of the 23 days they can arrest you on suspicion of another petty crime and do it all over again!
Well now the J-cops have decided that the playing field STILL isn’t tipped enough in their direction, so the J-justice system is introducing ‘plea bargaining’.
Picture the scene;
J-cop with an arrest quota to fill, an anti-NJ chip on his shoulder because of social myths, and an institutional culture that literally teaches him ‘foreigners have no rights’, sees you walking down the street alone.
He decides to stop you for a card check.
You refuse and ask what crime this is in connection with.
Well, now he says he’s arresting you because you don’t want to show him your residence card, and THAT is suspicious and grounds for arrest.
He takes you to the police station. The detectives explain to you that unless you’re going to confess to that petty crime they ‘know’ you did (and get a fine, visa cancelled, deported, improving J-cop statistics), they are going to hold you for weeks in connection with something much more serious, like robbery, rape, or murder. Maybe months even! 99% conviction rate, do you fancy your chances or would you like to cop a plea and get it over with today?

It’s popular in Japan to point the finger at Trump’s racism as a ‘what-about-ism’ deflection from Japan’s racism, but here’s a pre-Trump election victory article in which alt-right leading light explains how living in Japan formed his racist opinions;
‘A couple of days later, Johnson is at his cluttered desk in downtown LA, nattering merrily in Japanese to a woman in Tokyo. He gets lots of media requests these days, but especially from Japan. There’s an uncanny connection between Japan and white nationalism in America. Jared Taylor, white nationalism’s foremost intellectual, is another fluent speaker. “It’s an ethnostate and it’s deeply nationalist,” he says. “And they have resisted the pressure to admit refugees. I say: ‘God bless them!’”’

But how would he be treated if he lived in Japan now? Answer: as a second or third class citizen, a perpetual outsider.
“in 1978. But it was his two-year mission to Tohoku, Japan, that turned him. As he went from door to door, locals would opine on the greatness of white America. “They had an inferiority complex after the war, so we were treated like celebrities,” he says. “Oh, it was just the funnest time!”(from the article)
Another outdated view, colored by the (pre) bubble era.

Kansai temple complex Koya-san has s problem with racist monks treating tourists badly, and offended by rejection of unwanted ‘omotenashi’.
Very interesting read. Tourists are merely ‘rude’, but monks get the benefit of every obfuscation and diversion trick in the book.

@ Jim, as Japan’s northern neighbors wise up about exploitation they will face as “trainees” in Japan, J_Inc heads further south to untainted markets preferably with controlled media and lack of info, and so…Vietnam! (They have cute nurses too, if you ll remember a thread a couple of years back with the somewhat creepy local mayor sukebe saying how much he’s prefer a young girl to a robot, wink wink)
“The Vietnamese population of 232,562 (as of end June 2017) has shot past Brazil to make them the fourth-largest nationality, and they may soon overtake the Philippines (251,934) for third place.”

My God, it IS playing out that way too, as predicted:
“The Japanese I work with are devious. They scare me and I don’t care for them much.”
(Check)
Duan arrived four years ago as a language student, and wound up marrying a Japanese 18 years her senior.”
(As that mayor wanted..Check)
The language school where Duan first studied operated a side-business of farming out its students to part-time jobs,
(WHAT? IS this even legal?)
and initially Duan labored at a demanding job in a shipping depot for refrigerated items.
(Exploitation CHECK)

“One day I dropped a heavy box on my foot,” she relates bitterly. “I could barely walk and had to seek medical attention. Even the day I went to the hospital the company made me work.”
(Will Leave as one of countless Bitter Detractors, CHECK)
To make matters worse, thereby making her ineligible for worker’s compensation.
CHECK
“During 2015, their 2,556 violations of the criminal code exceeded the 2,390 cases by Chinese.”
Demonization of the foreign workforce? CHECK.

Jim, you say this is a bad article but at least it pulls no punches exposing this as yet another shady exploitation scam being run by those “devious” Japanese. I found it quite brutally honest.

Hi!
I thought the article was victim-blaming. So yeah, it does tell us that these people are being exploited, but takes no responsibility for that, and kinda makes out that they deserve it just for being here (kinda, if they don’t like it, they should go home, and good riddance! attitude).